IIM-B sees a slight drop in e-commerce hiring

This year, 409 eligible students took part in the placement process with five students opting outBENGALURU: The final placement season for the Post-Graduate Programme (PGP) class of 2014-16 at IIM-Bengaluru concluded on Thursday with 139 pre-placement offers extended to students before the final placements based on performance during summer internship.

This year, 409 eligible students took part in the placement process with five students opting out. Over 160 companies came for it and made over 450 offers across 20-plus job profiles.

The lateral placement for candidates with over 22 months work experience saw 136 offers made by firms in domains like consulting, business leadership, product management, operations, category management, and general management. Eighteen 18 students were offered international placements from various firms. Two students had foregone their pre-placement offers, which included one from a leading multinational financial services corporation, to continue with their entrepreneurial ventures.

Prof Ganesh N Prabhu, chairperson, career development services, IIM-B, said: "Though there was a slight dip in e-commerce hiring, consulting firms hired in larger numbers and helped accelerate the process."

In consulting, Bain & Company (17 offers), Accenture Strategy (16), Deloitte (14), The Boston Consulting Group (13), A T Kearney (11) and McKinsey & Co (8) were the top recruiters this year. More than 30% of the entire batch received offers from firms like Roland Berger, Alvarez & Marsal and GEP Consulting.

The major recruiter in this category was P&G with seven offers and other recruiters included Hindustan Unilever, ITC, Mondelez International, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Johnson & Johnson, Marico and Asian Paints. Telecom majors Vodafone and Bharti Airtel also made a number of offers. The major retail firm from the Middle East -- Alshaya -- recruited nine students this year. The e-commerce space saw heightened interest with Amazon and Flipkart making 16 and 11 offers respectively.

International banks such as Goldman Sachs, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, and Citibank took part on the first day of the final placements with Goldman Sachs making 14 offers. This placement season saw the participation of Avendus Capital and American Express. Private Equity or venture capital roles by India Value Funds were offered. Indian banks and financial institutions such as Kotak Investment Bank, ICICI Securities, ICICI Prudential, Yes Bank and Axis Bank made offers during the process, with ICICI leading the pack with 11 offers.

Sachin Bansal, Binny Bansal, sales director Hari, accounts managers Sumit Anand and Sharauque among other employees have been named in the FIR registered on the basis of a complaint lodged by Naveen Kumar, owner of Indiranagar-based C-Store Company.